With the growing computing capability of artificial intelligence, its application fields become more and more wide. In this process, an important development direction of the artificial intelligence is that computing units with different structures and resources are used in parallel for calculation, which requires using a large number of CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs. Along with the development of the semiconductor technology, such semiconductor chips will need a higher working frequency, and more current and power consumption due to the physical characteristics thereof.
Therefore, in order to meet the requirements of the semiconductor chip for computing performance and heat dissipation, higher technical requirements are proposed for a DC-DC (Direct current to direct current) power supply module. The DC-DC module needs to provide a processor with a larger current. The DC-DC module provides the power supply voltage to multiple cores of the semiconductor chip separately so as to reduce the power consumption in light load. The DC-DC module rapidly adjusts the power supply voltage so as to reduce the power consumption of the computing core in the idle time.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a semiconductor chip power supply system according to the related art. As shown in FIG. 1, the semiconductor chip power supply system 1 includes: a semiconductor chip 10 (such as a CPU, GPU, FPGA or ASIC) using a relatively high precision semiconductor manufacturing process A1, such as 14 nm process; a power converter control chip 12 using a relatively low precision semiconductor manufacturing process A2, such as 180 nm process; and a power converter power stage 11 including: switches T1 and T2 and their driver 100, as well as other corresponding passive components, such as an inductor L1, a capacitor C1, and a transformer. The switching frequency of the power converter power stage 11 is generally around 500 KHz, but the present disclosure is not limited thereto. In the semiconductor chip power supply system 1, the power converter power stage 11 supplies power to the semiconductor chip 10 by the controlling of the power converter control chip 12.
In order to meet the power supply demands of the chips in the future, the working frequency of the power converter power stage needs to be greatly improved to meet the higher power density and faster regulation capability, for example, from the current 500 KHz to 2 MHz or even above 10 MHz; also, the power converter control chip must have more rapid control capability, so the process precision A2 also needs to be improved. However, an increase in the process precision A2 often results in a high cost, especially in a case of increasing the process precision A2 to the process precision A1. Besides, the size of an independent power converter control chip is often small, and its market amount is difficult to support the high cost of high-tech semiconductor development. Therefore, at present, the process precision of 14 nm of the semiconductor chips is populated, but the process precision of the power converter control chip generally has not reached 60 nm.